Reasoned Opinions In An Unreasoned Time

Deplorables

The mainstream media is heavily biased against the President and his supporters. This is a matter of fact. As you will read below, I have compiled a collection of articles that lay out not only how the media soft-balled the Obama Admin (and one part why they may have done so). I will also walk you through how the press deceives the population, how many times they have had to make a retraction in the first 18 months of Trump’s presidency, and finally I will show a few of the many examples of open contempt against the President and his supporters.

The Media: Obama vs. Trump

Many political commentators on the right will note that, as a whole, the media was comparatively gentle to President Obama and his administration. They are correct, source, so much so that long time Democratic thought leader, Bill Clinton admitted as much, and claimed that part of the reason could have been that President Obama was the first black man to be president, source.

60 Minutes

There was a time when 60 Minutes was considered hard-hitting journalism. They knocked themselves down a few pegs when, in early 2013, they aired the Steve Kroft interview of Obama and Clinton. Pundits excoriated it for being journalistic softball and asking zero questions of substance. It is especially obvious when you make the comparison, like the author does at the end of this piece, between the 2013 Kroft interview and the 2007 Scott Pelley interview of President Bush. It is, however, not as if there was nothing of substance to ask about during the 2013 interview.

As noted, here, the endorsements that many prominent media outlets published for Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign barely, if at all, offered anything other than unadulterated praise for the chosen one. Again, you can compare it to the scathing rebuke of President Bush in the 2008 election cycle endorsement of Obama, mentioned in the same article. It is also very easy to imagine that, in equally unflattering words as Bush received and much unlike the historical abridging for President Obama’s deficiencies, President Trump’s shortcomings will be elaborately spelled out in a screed wholly condemning him and endorsing anyone that is running against him, by these same outlets.

Reporting Disparities

In a final comparison of President Trump’s and President Obama’s media attention, I present this Pew Research study that outlines how the media treated each President in the first 60 days of their first term in office. The study found that only 5% of the coverage for President Trump, in the first 60 days, was positive. This is in contrast to over 40% for President Obama. There was also over 300% more negative coverage of President Trump than there was of President Obama. The study goes on to say that only 31% of the coverage of President Trump focused on his ideology and agenda, and a whopping 69% focused on his character and leadership, versus a 50/50 split in coverage for President Obama.

Deceptive Headlines

I am starting strong in this section with my first example how the media is twisting headlines to paint the narrative that they want. This is one of the most egregious examples of editorial malfeasance that I have personally seen, so let’s begin.

Local News

Recently, there was a story from a local NBC affiliate in Houston, TX., KPRC, that made my stomach drop just based on the headline. If true, things had actually gotten very bad in this country and things were likely going to get much worse. Below is a screenshot from the website on 8/16/18. Source

If you are like me, you read this and balked. Did he get arrested because of the sticker on his truck‽

No, he was not. He was, in fact, arrested because he had warrants for his arrest. He did not have a front license plate on his vehicle, as required by law in Texas, and he was pulled over. During the stop, the cop discovered warrants and arrested the driver. The facts of this story are extremely mundane; a guy has warrants for his arrest and guy is then arrested for those warrants. End of story.

I saw this on Facebook as I was scrolling down my feed and, like many, I just will skim a headline and determine if a story is worth reading or not. I actually read the story and condemned the editorial staff for such bush-league tactics of click-bait garbage reporting. This headline was (probably) intentionally worded to make it seem like this dude got arrested for his sticker and that his 1st Amendment rights were being infringed upon because, Trump. Often, people will see a provocative headline and just immediately spread misinformation because the headline was misleading.

Any news organization that allows this type of misleading headline for a story with such run-of-the-mill facts must be ridiculed and widely condemned for a lack of journalistic integrity.

Russia

Ever since Donald Trump surprised the world by, legitimately, winning the Presidency, there has been a concerted effort to confound the facts of the DNC/Podesta email hacking and the Russian social media efforts to foment division in the United States. The deliberate wording of headlines by many news media outlets was an effort to further sow division in the citizenry, and delegitimize President Trump as much as possible.

Let me show you:

To the best of my knowledge, there is a consensus that the Russians did not hack into voting machines in an effort to change votes. These headlines may make one think differently though. The media say”Russian Election Hacking” to make it seem to the Russians were able to hack into the voting machine servers (or whatever) and actually change the votes that were cast. This is a blatant effort to delegitimize his victory by making the electorate feel as if Russia stole their vote, and not to trust the results. Instead of saying that the Russians hacked the DNC/John Podesta and that they ran ads and stuff on Facebook, the media make it seem as if the actual outcome of the election has been altered.

Detention Center Death

In their eagerness to paint the President as some kind of monster that hates children (especially the immigrant ones), some media and the anti-Trump internet hate machine took a tweet about an unverified report of a child dying after leaving an ICE detention facility and ran with it. As reported here the lawyer originally stated that the child died in ICE custody, and then minutes later she deleted that tweet and stated that the child may have died while in ICE custody. HUGE difference. The record has been corrected though. This article does not accurately reflect the story and at first glance makes it seem like the child for sure died while in ICE custody. It is not until the last full paragraph that the author states:

While it is possible that this death may not be any fault of those running this particular ICE detention center, the very fact that these children are still locked up, away from their parents, and perhaps not getting the medical attention they deserve, is simply unacceptable to most Americans.

Instead of conveying this important fact at the end of the article, the author should have either noted the unconfirmed information earlier in the story, or should have used a different headline.

The Media’s Inaccurate Reporting

Reporters and journalist have always made mistakes when reporting the news. It seems now that news media outlets are having to walk back claims, about the President, with regularity. The first 18 months of President Trump’s tenure have been rife with inaccurate reporting. The never ending news cycle makes these outlets want to publish things as fast as possible, fact checking be dammed.

Brian Ross

ABC News Investigative Journalist Brian Ross reported in late 2017 that LtGen Flynn was instructed by candidate Trump to initiate contact with the Russians. This would be highly problematic for the president if it were true. It , however, was not true. As noted here, Ross was wrong, despite having claimed to verify the information. The erroneous reporting did have real world impact though. After Ross made the claim, and before it was corrected, the stock market tumbled, likely, causing some to lose money. Ross appeared on World News Tonight that night to set the record straight. Soon after, Ross was suspended without pay for 4 weeks, and ultimately ended up leaving the network this past summer. While I imagine there was no overt malice behind his actions, the excitement of having such damming news on the President, one which no one in the media seems to like, was sure to have lead to corners being cut before moving forward with the story.

Donald Trump Jr.

One week after the Brian Ross incident everyone’s favorite news outlet, CNN, made an equally egregious error when they report that Donald Trump Jr. had gotten information from Wikileaks, regarding the stolen emails, ten days before they were made public; Source. This would be severely damaging to the Trump presidency if it had been true. It would have been very strong evidence that something nefarious happened between the Trump Campaign and Wikileaks. Except, like the Brian Ross story, this one was also not true. CNN reported that the email was sent on September 4, 2016, and that the emails were made public on the 13th. But, as it turns out, the email was sent on September 14, 2016, a day after they were made public.

Earlier in the year, three CNN journalists resigned after inaccurate reports of financial ties between Trump officials and a Russian investment fund were published.

Over 50 Other Instances of Inaccurate Reporting

The Media’s Open Contempt for President Trump and His Supporters

The media and those on the left like to think of themselves as the most righteous of all. That they are the tolerant, good guys. Their tolerance ends the second there is any shred of disagreement with them, and it can manifest itself in a number of ways.

We Are Deplorables

Late in the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton called us “Deplorables.” Few have forgotten her words, but I imagine that many forgot how she was mostly given a pass by the media. In this article on Vox, the author more or less writes that Clinton was not wrong in her assertion. They even go so far as to say, “Whether the “deplorables” are really half of Trump’s current general election voters depends a bit on how you count, but it’s at least a plausible estimate.” So, there is that. President Trump got over 60 million votes in the election, so using Clinton’s estimate, this author is saying about 30 million people are deplorable people.

These same people do not understand how Donald Trump was elected.

We’re All Toothless White Trash

Recently, the President had a rally in Tamp, FL., you know, the one where Jim Acosta was heckled and the media flipped out over that. There was a reporter for Politicothat tweeted, “If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth.” The video was showing a clip of the people heckling Acosta. Eventually he clarified that he was only talking about folks in the clip, and not necessarily the President’s supporters generally.

These same people do not understand how Donald Trump was elected.

Our Elevator Does Not Reach the Top Floor

CNN is trash and Jim Acosta is trash as well. Recently, Acosta made headlines because he claimed that Trump supporters’ elevators might not hit all the floors and and that we do not have all of our facilities. According to this CNN article, we are all misunderstanding what Acosta said. I have read it more than a few times trying to find the best possible read of his statements. It very much seems like he is referring to us Toothless Deplorables.

Jim Acosta, CNN, and the rest of the media do not understand how Donald Trump was elected President.

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I do not pretend that an outlet like Fox is not slanted in favor of the President, and Republicans more generally. Fox, however, is more or less the only mainstream outlet without a left bias to it. Whereas ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and any “smaller” outlets (like MSNBC) all have a very strong and obvious bias to the left. The number of outlets that are not Fox News ensures that the left’s message will be the loudest and most widely disseminated.

Despite everything noted above, the media will loudly proclaim their objectivity. Do not believe them, they are liars. Their lies allow hacks like Jim Acosta to play the victim, and they use his “victim hood” to ratchet up the anti-right wing/Republican/Conservative/Trump animosity on the left.

Note, the majority of this was written a couple of weeks prior to finally being posted. The Media turned the dial up to 11 with their coverage of the Manafort/Cohen conviction/plea deal. Things are crazy, and the media is still against you.